Conversations are powerful. Words, gestures, and facial movements help to convey what is truly going on in a person’s heart as they speak. Rarely does a conversation leave those involved unchanged.
I often find that conversations bring about a period of soul-searching within myself. The words I spoke go through scrutiny as I mentally relive them. How could I have expressed myself better? How could I have listened better? Does what I presented to that person truly reflect my standing as a child in the ultimate family of families?
I recently had one of these conversations with a stranger in a public place. The whole of it transpired in but a few minutes, yet God never allows a single moment to pass where learning cannot take place. I’m given the beautiful opportunity to push out of my limited way of thinking towards His truth.
This particular evening, I was roaming the nearby Barnes and Noble store. An employee asked if I needed any help and I gave my usual answer: No. As he walked away, I changed my mind because, yes, I actually did need help.
“Where are the books on. . . writing?”
Turns out, that employee worked in the exact section of the store I needed to look. As we rode the escalator to the second floor, he asked me if I had written a book before or if this was my first one.
“This will be my first one.”
We arrived in the reference section and then he asked me what type of book I would be writing.
“Nonfiction.”
In order to help me further, he asked what specific nonfiction I would be writing.
Ah.
That is where I could hear my mind start working it’s typical response to questions I am ill-prepared for.
“Uh, I am going to be, um, writing, um, about. . .”
It seemed like I was on a stage and everyone was staring and wondering what my answer would be. I wanted to sound confident and happy that I was writing about my particular subject.
Instead I fell flat. My words came out in a whisper.
“Me,” I said softly and I started fumbling over my words as I do when nervousness sets in. “I am writing kind of about me and something about my being a homemaker and something like that.”
The words coming out of my mouth were ridiculous. Here I was trying to answer a simple question about the what of my book and I melted into a stuttering woman who had no straight answer.
It was painful to me and the helpful man in front of me had to put my halting answers together and come up with some kind of helpful book for a writer who was writing nonfiction about: a homemaker memoir or “something like that?”
And in my being of being I know exactly what I am going to write though it honestly has nothing to do with being a homemaker. Yet for the first time I had acknowledged in public that I was a writer and instead of owning that fact and thanking God for His gift of my love for words, doubt and fear presented.
There are many words to describe me and one of them is an awful word. Perfectionist. When there seems to be no way that I can accomplish my project so that nothing will be wrong with it, I tuck it under some papers and unfinished dreams and say “later.”
Only “later” never comes. It comes and goes and I feel a bit of relief that I never did try what I had wanted to do because that inevitably would have led to failure. And one thing that knocks me down and out is failure.
Failure will happen but fear should not. My God has commanded me to fear not.
If I had gone into that bookstore now, after much time has been spent on how I should have answered helpful-bookseller-man, I would had said this:
“I am writing a book. It is nonfiction. My book will be accomplished after much prayer and continual stops to remind myself that God is in control of my words. Not I.
This book will be about one of my most intense passions. It will contain my heart and will challenge me as I write it. My genuine hope and desire is to encourage women who are walking the walk I am putting my feet to. I want to meet these women where they are at because I am there, too.”
Maybe the kind of book I am writing is not going to end up on a best seller list. And if I were to answer the name of it to the average person they would respond with apologetic acknowledgement of never having heard it. But if my heart speaks to one, one person, one woman who can feel that someone is finally understanding her circumstances, then God has used me.
And so my confidence comes not from words but from my Father who loved me enough to use me for His better purposes. The fear and doubt and perfectionism and people pleasing will slide into the place where they belong right in the cabinet entitled “finally overcoming.”
Perhaps one day you may “see [my] name on these shelves” as the helpful man cheerily encouraged me as he left to help others. Perhaps not. My chief end is to glorify my God.
May it ever be so.
